The redesign of the Civic Federation website in July has provided the public, government officials, and the media better access to the Federation’s analyses of government services in Illinois. The regularly-updated Civic Federation blog especially has provided a constant source of information on the issues that the Federation covers, including local budgets and pensions, taxes, privatization and asset leases, and commentary on events in the news. Blog posts about local government budgets…
The Civic Federation's legislative priorities for 2010 include public pension reform, requiring state government to develop and implement performance measurement and a capital improvement plan, the dissolving of the Illinois International Port District, creating a new governing board for the Cook County Forest Preserve District, reinstating means-tested transit discounts for seniors, requiring large counties to produce timely annual audits, enacting tax increment financing reporting reform,…
The Civic Federation has enormous concerns about the fiscal risks associated with Governor Quinn’s “deal” to avoid CTA fare increases. Under the proposal, the Regional Transportation Authority will issue General Obligation bonds worth $83 million in both 2010 and 2011 and transfer the funds to the CTA for capital projects. The CTA will then shift a similar amount of its existing capital funds to its operating budget. The State of Illinois is supposed to then pay the first two years of debt…
While the Civic Federation traditionally analyzes features common to all local government budgets, our analyses of the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) budgets include additional productivity measurement data. The Civic Federation uses expenditure, personnel and ridership data provided by CTA to gain insight into changes in productivity. The Civic Federation uses three measures to assess CTA’s productivity over time: labor cost per actual unlinked passenger trip; actual unlinked passenger…
The Civic Federation supports the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) proposed FY2010 budget of $1.29 billion. Facing significant public funding short falls, CTA plans to close its $300.9 million deficit with fare increases ranging from 25 to 75 cents per ride, the elimination of 1,021 full-time equivalent positions, reductions in bus and rail service and the transfer of capital funds into general operating funds. The Federation finds that the transfer of capital funds into operating funds and…
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) recently implemented a vendor database that allows members of the public to search for vendor and contract information on the CTA website. The database is intended to improve the transparency of the CTA’s procurement activities by making data about individual vendors and contracts more easily accessible to the public, particularly vendors interested in doing business with CTA. Users can search the Vendor, Contract and Payment Search database using keywords in…
In order to make its capital selection process more transparent in FY2009, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has revised the way in which is selects and prioritizes capital projects. CTA’s revised capital selection process includes an additional layer of accountability with the creation of a new Capital Governance Board consisting of five of the CTA’s executive vice presidents, its budget director, and its director of planning. The Capital Governance Board will review the FY2010-…
This report provides a trend analysis of indicators that measure the financial health and performance of ten major local government pension funds from 1998 to 2007, the most recent year for which audited data are available. It finds that unfunded liabilities for the ten funds climbed even during years of good investment returns, increasing from $4.8 to $17.1 billion in ten years, and makes numerous recommendations on legislative actions that should be taken to slow the downward spiral of…
This report reviews best practices in the composition of public pension boards of trustees nationwide, and makes recommendations on improvements to pension boards in Illinois.
The Civic Federation supports the CTA’s FY2009 budget of $1.3 billion as a responsible short-term plan to provide critical mass transit services to the Chicagoland population. The CTA’s proposed fare increases of 25 to 50 cents per ride, combined with personnel reductions, are a reasonable means of offsetting the mounting costs of the free ride programs mandated by Governor Blagojevich, decreased real estate transfer tax revenues and skyrocketing energy and fuel costs. The Federation is…
